This next release of the Phoronix Test Suite is, as expected, version 2.8. Continuing with our traditional naming scheme for Phoronix Test Suite releases and with the PTS 2.x series carrying city names from the region of Troms in Norway, Phoronix Test Suite 2.8 is codenamed Torsken. Torsken is a fishing village on the Senja island in Troms, Norway.

Phoronix Test Suite 2.8 is expected for release in mid-to-late August of this year. The first alpha release of Torsken should come in two to three weeks with a handful of alpha/beta releases to follow.

This next release of our open-source benchmarking platform is largely focusing on starting to rework some of the internal components in preparations for features we will be introducing in Phoronix Test Suite 3.0. There still will be some interesting end-user features in Phoronix Test Suite 2.8, but a majority of the work being done in this next release is with the planned Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 feature-set in mind -- to be announced at a later date. Phoronix Test Suite 3.0 should prove to be a revolutionary step for open-source benchmarking and automated testing with some prodigious capabilities to come.

Already in the Git code-base for the Phoronix Test Suite at Phorogit is the beginning of the PTS3 work, more work on the new results parser interface introduced in Phoronix Test Suite 2.6, various bug-fixes, support for generating pie charts, more tweaks to the PTS Results Viewer, updated test profiles, and much more.

We welcome your feedback and feature requests in ensuring that Phoronix Test Suite 2.8 "Torsken" is an even more exciting release and fulfills your automated testing/benchmarking needs. With Phoronix Test Suite 2.8 will also come an updated version of Phoromatic.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the web-site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience and being the largest web-site devoted to Linux hardware reviews, particularly for products relevant to Linux gamers and enthusiasts but also commonly reviewing servers/workstations and embedded Linux devices. Michael has written more than 10,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics hardware drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated testing software. He can be followed via Twitter and Google+ or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.